


Hold My Breath as I Wish For Death

by AkelaKela



Series: Theo Raeken [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Good Theo Raeken, Guilt, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Introspection, Medical Experimentation, Medical Phobia, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Metallica References, Metallica Songfic, Minor Thiam, Nightmares, Psychological Trauma, Songfic, Tara deserved better, Tara was a good sister, Teen Wolf Whump, The Author Regrets Nothing, Theo Raeken Has Nightmares, Theo Raeken Whump, Theo has a phobia, Theo has issues, Theo killed her anyway, Theo-centric, Very angsty fic, Whump, Why Did I Write This?, guilt/remorse, mentions of Bad Theo Raeken, terrible writing style, this doesn't make sense, traumatic memories, what is good writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 09:23:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16472885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkelaKela/pseuds/AkelaKela
Summary: songfic about Theo Raeken's demons.Song: One by Metallica





	Hold My Breath as I Wish For Death

**I can't remember anything**  
**Can't tell if this is true or dream**  
**Deep down inside I feel to scream**  
**This terrible silence stops me**

"Your sister wants to see you." Kira's eyes glow a terrible orange and Theo knows that it isn't her speaking anymore. He braces himself, waits for her to charge, anticipating the sword about to tear his flesh and skewer him alive.

 But she stabs it into the concrete below them with the strength only a kitsune could have and the cleaves the ground in two. Something grabs his ankle and she's there. _Tara_ is there, her drenched hair plastered to her forehead by the freezing river water, her eyes shining out of her grey face vengefully. And then he's being dragged down, his sister sicced upon him like a dog. 

Theo Raeken thought he couldn't feel anything, his emotions sliced out of him by the Dread Doctors long ago, only the instinct of anger and self-preservation left behind. This is the first thing he's felt in years and it's pure, unadulterated fear constricting his chest all at once, like a cage shrinking around his lungs. He scrabbles at the ground in desperation as she drags him below, screaming, begging Scott to help him. Because Scott would try to help someone strangling him to death. Scott stands there in disbelief, eyes red, jaws parted in disbelief and Theo wants rake his claws down his face when he does nothing, when he just stands there as he's dragged down into the depths of hell.

 

**Now that the war is through with me**  
**I'm waking up, I cannot see**  
**That there is not much left of me**  
**Nothing is real but pain now**

Theo is jerked from a sleep he can't remember falling into, the walls close around him. He slams his hands into them, the freezing metal burning into his skin. He scrabbles forward, crashing through the door at the end of the dark tunnel and onto the floor of the empty morgue. He steps forward cautiously, taking in the dimly room around him. He crashes through the doors, padding down the hall in his bare feet. The hospital is dark and deserted, and he knows something is amiss. 

"Theooo..." Her voice is a grating whisper, echoing off the vacant hallways and he turns, rooted to the spot in fear as he watches her drag herself across the floor.

Her corpse is rigid, as though her bones have been frozen stiff and he remembers the ice crusted in her long hair when she was finally pulled from the freezing waters of river. Where he'd dropped her. Her chest is little more than a gaping hole, the ribs wrenched apart, broken shards of bone hanging by almost-severed tendons, dripping ropes of congealed blood. 

Her eyes are dead, the once watery, lovely blue smiling gaze idle, unseeing. He faintly remembers those eyes bright, warm and laughing, the feeling of her arms around him when she told him she loved him. 

  **Hold my breath as I wish for death**  
**Oh please, God, wake me**

Then she's on top of him, her lip curled up in a triumphant, disgusted smirk. Her tiny fingers stab downwards, into his chest, through layers of muscle and bone and she smiles a horrible smile, her mouth full of blackened teeth and Theo wants to vomit. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she rips her heart from his chest, blood leaking from it as it beats one last time for him, nestled in her frigid fingers.

 

 Then he's back in the drawer, clawing his way to the light again.

 

 

Again and again, he runs, knowing that resistance is futile. Knowing that this is his punishment, his hell. That he's  fated to run forever, fear choking him, the demons of his own making baying  for his blood.

 **Hold my breath as I wish for death**  
**Oh please, God, wake me**

He watches her face, probably a million times, her undead features twisting into a sickening grin the moment he lets out a gasp of pain. 

"Theooo..." The voice isn't menacing anymore. His hackles don't rise; there's no threat woven through the curse that is his name. Tara speaks her name in a plaintive whisper, a final prayer for comfort.

She'd reached a hand out to him that night, begging him to take it with those big, expressive eyes, beseeching him to save her. Or to comfort him as she breathed her last. He'd never know. Because he'd just stood there, staring down at her impassively as though his sister was nothing more than a drowning insect, kicking it's legs, desperate for a few more seconds alive on this earth before it would sink beneath the surface forever.

Then they were there, dragging Tara's trembling body from the river, her eyes flashing in recognition before they went still. Ice threaded it's cruel fingers through her hair, laying splayed around her in sodden, dismal tangles. They ripped her heart from her chest, snapping and cracking her ribcage open before they discarded her like an empty candy wrapper, inconsequential rubbish when they had what they wanted.

 **Back to the world that's much too real**  
**In pumps life that I must feel**  
**But can't look forward to reveal**  
**Look to the time when I'll live**

When Theo finally emerged, dragged from the horrors by someone. Liam and Hayden stand before him and he blurts out the first thing that comes to his lips, because this isn't real. This is just another depraved scenario weaved by his mind. It's different, though. Liam's watery blue eyes turn to steel in front of his and since when has he been here? thinks Theo. He braces himself, waiting for Liam to rip Tara's heart from his chest just as Hayden supplies that his sister is dead, very helpfully adding that he killed her, as though he hasn't been reliving it for what feels like lifetimes.

Theo would gladly punch the stupid bitch in the face, surprising himself when he doesn't.

He doesn't want to believe that it's real because it can't be. He can't have escaped so easily. Not after everything he's done. Since when does he care?

 **Fed through the tube that sticks in me**  
**Just like a wartime novelty**  
**Tied to machines that make me be**  
**Cut this life off from me**

The Dread Doctors had done whatever they please with him, his body their own personal playground on which to act out their twisted fantasy of immortality. So when Liam holds the door of the drawer open, Theo can feel the nausea fluttering in his stomach. He'd rather die that climb into it. To his relief Liam seems freaked out enough to chance it with the Ghost Riders.

 

 

It's the first time of many time that they'll be thrown together by a shitty situation and an ongoing competition to one-up each other in casual bravery. It hurts to remember everything he's done and how he might never be able to make up for all of it. Liam's solemness makes it bearable though. The way he's so serious, always bickering with Theo but never quite crossing the invisible line between banter and abuse.

_His nightmares have gotten more creative now that he's back on earth instead of under it._

_"His condition worsens." The world is blurry, a confused colour wheel of too-bright shapes burning into his brain through his stinging eyes._

_"No." He whispers, struggling feebly against his bindings, barely able to move as a shooting pain erupts from his arm. A gloved hand roughly pushes a tube into his vein and he's sure that it must be splitting. The pain was phenomenal and he choked, blood filling his mouth. He must have bit down on his tongue because his mouth was afire with pain and blood dribbled down the side of his face. His head ached and he could barely hold his eyes open against the pain. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had anything to drink._

_Then hard fingers grab his face in a bruising grip, holding his mouth open and a tube is fed down his throat. He jerks, gagging and choking but it's useless. He can feel his throat closing and then he can't breathe, his body convulsing, chest tightening as he tries in vain to suck in air. In that moment, surrounded by bespectacled, masked faces, Theo Raeken wants nothing more than for these to be his last moments. His life is nothing except pain. Every waking minute is a new procedure, another operation to scream and thrash through. He's nothing more than a rat to them, another pathetic bastard stupid enough to believe their empty promises of endless power._

_He should have jumped into the river with Tara._

  **Hold my breath as I wish for death**  
**Oh please, God, wake me**

He's terrified when he's sucked below, for the first time in years.

But as he sees his big sister's face again and again, he remembers.

He remembers afternoons in Tara's room, her gentle nagging guiding him through fractions and essays for school. Hours would pass by on her neatly made bed, doing homework or reading for school. She'd pick up his book when he'd get bored, reading aloud to him. She'd make all the different sounds, deepening her high pitched voice to a deep bass or faking a Russian accent as best as she could. Theo would giggle until his face hurt and she'd tackled him, tickling him until he breathlessly begged her to stop through peals of laughter.

Then her fingers pierced his chest again and he looked into her eyes, searching for any flicker of emotion within them.

 **Now the world is gone, I'm just one**  
**Oh God, help me**  
**Hold my breath as I wish for death**  
**Oh please, God, help me**

Tara would fix him a snack after school, he remembered when he awoke in the morgue again. She would be the one pouring him a glass of milk and making him a sandwich or tossing him a box of cookies for them to share. His parents came home late often, finding the two latch-key kids asleep, Theo dreaming of whatever story Tara had been reading to him that day.

This time tears filled his eyes as she killed him.

Theo's big sister had always protected him. When Tod Dickens stole his lunch money for the second time in a row, Tara had marched up to him and demanded it back. Then she'd clobbered him with her math textbook. No one had ever bothered Theo again.

The tears rolled down his cheeks, hot and angry when she tackled him to the floor.

 **Darkness imprisoning me**  
**All that I see**  
**Absolute horror**  
**I cannot live**  
**I cannot die**  
**Trapped in myself**  
**Body my holding cell**

Then he's alone in the morgue again and he just stands there, fear and guilt a twisted know heavy in the pit of his stomach. The old Theo would run and hide but he can't run anymore. He just wants the nightmare to end, wants to rip his own heart himself if it means he gets to die. Damn Scott Mccall and his stupid, self righteous scruples because he'd much rather just be dead. he'd much rather have choked to death on a lungful of blood in those tunnels than be tortured like this. 

Scott's pack wouldn't kill him, supposedly too wholesome and genuine to do so, but Theo knew this was worse. A hundred times worse than dying alone, a million times more painful than bleeding out on some library floor. The irony was cruel. 

Then she's in front of him, on top of him, tearing out her heart. He doesn't know where it comes from, the presence of mind to speak.

"It's okay. You don't have to stop." He he chokes and he can see her through the tears welling in his eyes. He remembered her being so much bigger, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she patted him on the head. They'd walk home from school in the mellow, honeyed afternoon sun while Theo prattled on and on about his day. Tara always seemed to have time to listen, no matter how tedious and boring the details were.

She looks so small. He'd always known her as his big sister, always there to hug him or comfort him, always taller, her arms easily cradling his body to her.

She looks to fragile, even as she kills him for the umpteenth time and the realisation is like a being punched in the gut. She's heartbreakingly young, her face so soft, still childlike as she scoops out his heart.

It happens again and again. Sometimes her runs to the lift,  tripping over the rigid hand locked around his ankle, sometimes she crawls through the doors of the morgue. Other times he falls out of the drawer and she's just there, silently demanding her right.

Finally he doesn't have the strength to fight for something stolen.

So he pads down the hall, toward her, staring straight into those horrible, decrepit eyes before he falls to his knees, his head bowed. He submits to it, accepts his fate. He deserves this. This is his restitution.

"I'm sorry." He whispers, the words dry, rattling off his tongue. "You didn't have to die." He gets out before she tears her heart out and raises it to her face, staring down at the ball of muscle and blood.

Then she looks down at him, her shrunken, shrivelled features expressionless. Maybe his blurred vision invents it, but Theo Raeken wants to believe that there's a glimmer of life in those lifeless eyes before the sky opens above him and he's charging the first thing he sees, demanding where Tara is, because _goddamnit_ , he needs to see her one last time, to tell her that she didn't deserve to die, that he _loved_ her, that he's sorry.

**Landmine has taken my sight**  
**Taken my speech**  
**Taken my hearing**  
**Taken my arms**  
**Taken my legs**  
**Taken my soul**  
**Left me with life in hell**

 "She's dead. You killed her, remember?" Hayden says and he closes his eyes, forced to relive it all over again, the trust dying from Tara's eyes a split second before the life does as she begs him to help her, to hold her hand.

He knew she'd come to the forest that night. Because she would never let him go alone, never in her life endanger his. He doesn't know which is worse; being trapped in hell with her or escaping from it. Because he knows deep down inside that he doesn't deserve to survive this, that he deserves to rot down there for all of eternity. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Metallica songs are such a mood and this one was practically screaming 'Theo' at me so I had to write this.


End file.
